"A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole

[skillet]

this was in the "contemporary classics" section of my local Border's, along with "Catcher in the Rye", works by Camus, and a few others. I was intrigued, I must admit, so I bought it on impulse. I read the back and it said, in part, that it is set in Nig Orleans. I saved the receipt just in case.

Has anyone else read this? or should I take it back?rolfl

[CT Wolf]

A Confederacy of Dunces is a great read.
If you have ever lived in New Orleans or spent some time there, you'll probably want to read the book several times. It describes life in New Orleans and all the odd and escentric people there very well. It's really funny and slightly tragic at the same time.
I was going to mention it here but you beat me to it.

[skillet]

Although it's been years since I've read it, I seem to recall that "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" had some really eccentric characters as well, only in Savannah. Ok, CT, you sold me!! I'll start reading it tonite

[CT Wolf]

John Belushi was going to play Ignatius Reilly but unfortunately he also killed himself.

[ahartn]

Read this book! The nigger character in the book is pretty much true to life. Like CT said, it is tragic but funny all at once.

The author actually killed himself and his mother was responsible for the book being published after his death. There were probably many parallels between the author's life and the story which made the book even more interesting to me.

[CT Wolf]

I'd always imagined Toole to be on the chubby side but after a quick Google search, it turns out he was a rather regular looking fellow.
Take a look here (http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://kenandthelma.com/images/KenBiloxi.jpg&imgrefurl=http://kenandthelma.com/fromtheintro.htm&h=300&w=218&sz=19&hl=en&start=3&um=1&tbnid=D6EoG0jVnuPwjM:&tbnh=116&tbnw=84&prev=/images%3Fq%3Djohn%2Bkennedy%2Btoole%26um%3D1%26hl% 3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26sa%3DN)